


Pear & Gorgonzola

by anatsuno, Cesare



Series: Foster's Bakery [4]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-02
Updated: 2010-02-02
Packaged: 2017-10-06 23:15:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anatsuno/pseuds/anatsuno, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cesare/pseuds/Cesare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Follows directly after <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/58619">Remembrance Day</a>, part of the <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/2255">Foster's Bakery AU</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pear & Gorgonzola

"I'm normally not that great at first dates, or really, any dates, except the sex part. But I think this is going really well!"

John's incredulous face threatens to make Rodney flush in embarrassment for saying that aloud, but his honking laughter - head ducked down, shoulders shaking - restores the balance of the moment.

From the grin that follows it seems that John's not offended by the remark, might even be pleased. As he should be. The date _is_ going really well so far, or else Rodney's lost all sense of perspective, a prospect too alarming to contemplate when his belly's pleasantly full, the streets are nicely empty, the evening air crisp and clear.

They shared a first kiss, and then John hopped down from the concrete ledge and led the way to lunch, where he ordered a speciality sandwich and deconstructed it, picking off the pear and gorgonzola. Rodney had no choice but to call his attention to the plain turkey sandwiches on the menu, and caught himself mid-rant when he realized John was provoking him on purpose.

"These are for dessert," John said, offering slices, his fingers brushing against Rodney's lips: sweet fruit and tangy cheese, made even more delicious by the mild salt of John's fingertips.

They stayed at the lunch place, talking, ordering cup after cup of tea and coffee to justify occupying the table. Now John's knee bumps companionably against Rodney's under the table, and their hands keep touching, as well, too often to be merely accidental.

John recovers from his laughter and taps Rodney's knuckles. "We should probably head back."

"To your place?"

"Don't see how we could be heading back to anywhere else but where we started."

Rodney aims a finger at him and concedes. "Good point."

There's an instant of floating indecision before they both rise, pushing back the chairs, just enough pause for Rodney's brain to launch into a replay - he said this was going really well and incidentally (unintentionally!) boasted about his sexual prowess, and John laughed, then immediately suggested they go back to his - does that imply what Rodney thinks it might imply? Because if it does, it's possible this could be going a little _too_ well, or - fast, rather.

John fishes some folded bills out of his pocket and peels off a few, tucking them under his teacup. "Don't forget your jacket," he says, unhooking it from the back of Rodney's chair and handing it over.

Startled out from his mental overdrive, Rodney shrugs it on, his shoulders relaxing instantly under the added warmth. Apparently John is such good company that he managed to distract Rodney from the colder air creeping in on the back of the afternoon.

The sun is lowering, and they find themselves walking just a little more briskly on the way back through the park, particularly along the side with that waist-high ledge, where it's really windy.

"Oh, hey," says John suddenly, catching Rodney's arm at the end of the ledge.

Rodney is briefly bewildered, but the way John pulls him close is the unmistakable prelude to a kiss, and the proverbial light bulb goes on. God, was it just a few hours ago, was that here?

This kiss is different, a little surer and more playful. John's only a little taller than he is, but he feels it in the unfamiliar bend of his neck and the angle of his head, and he has a sudden disturbing vision of himself improbably tilted back like a romance-novel heroine, his spine describing an arc while John smirks above him in a frothy laced shirt.

Rodney squares his shoulders somewhat and nips at John's mouth a little pointedly, licking into his mouth with a playful flick of his tongue; the troubling image fades out. They keep at it, deep and deeper, growing serious, as John's hand slides a bit lower on Rodney's body and seeks heat up under the hem of his jacket.

John eases back gradually, not before hooking his fingers into Rodney's belt loop and tugging. The gesture goes straight to Rodney's dick and he's suddenly painfully aware that they're PDAing away in a wide open park... though he realizes, a moment later, that this precise spot is screened by trees on one side and a hedge on the other. Still: public. Also, any more of this and he'll be walking funny all the way back. It's almost a relief that John's stepping away, dotting a last little peck onto the corner of Rodney's mouth.

"Ahem." Rodney, smiling and feeling dazed, nonetheless adjusts his belt and jacket a bit, all the while struggling to force his eyes away from John's shiny, luscious lips. John quirks an eyebrow at him and Rodney gestures vaguely. "I mean, whoa, yes, but. I think we're going to have to walk a little slower for a few minutes. So. There. Sorry."

"Slow's fine," John says, setting an ambling pace. "I was thinking, actually. I, uh... I like this part, you know?" He brushes Rodney's hand briefly. "And we've known each other a while, so, maybe... we could take it slow."

It's a good thing that John's looking straight ahead as he speaks and not turning to look at Rodney, because even though Rodney totally, _absolutely_ was thinking that same thing (and isn't it fortunate that they're of like mind on this,) still, he can tell there's some latency there, an expression of dismay crossing his face - a short one! a tenth of a second, if that! a hundredth of a second! - before his rational cognitive functions kick in.

Rodney meant to suggest it, sure, but... this is the sort of thing one wants to tell others and not _hear_, like it's preferable to instigate a breakup rather than suffer it. Does Rodney not kiss well enough for John's taste? What's wrong, that John's not in a hurry to bend Rodney over, or hell, get bent over by Rodney, or rub all over him while they kiss some more?

But once the toga-waving drama-queen part of his psyche is silenced (quickly, so quickly,) Rodney nods, touching John's hand in return.

"I was... I was considering that. The very same thought! It's... been a long time, and, um, as you say. I'm enjoying this, a, a lot."

John flashes a grin at him sidewise. "Cool."

Somehow, though, even though they've just agreed that they won't be taking things much further yet, they end up walking faster, and then a little faster again, soon arriving at the loft.

"Beer?" John asks as they go in.

"Sure, thank you." Rodney follows him in and strips down to his shirt again, warmed up from their brisk pace near the end, and from climbing the stairs. "Though first I, um, need to--"

"Bathroom's all yours," John points over his shoulder, already striding to the fridge. Rodney gratefully drapes his jacket over a chair and disappears inside.

The washroom is as neat as the rest of the loft, utilitarian. The only trace of personality is a bright yellow hand soap shaped like a race car next to the sink.

Rodney gives in to curiosity and nudges open the medicine cabinet doors as he washes his hands. One side is full of typical OTC remedies, pain relievers, cold and flu treatments, vitamin supplements. Folic acid and low dose aspirin. Maybe heart disease runs in the Sheppard family.

The other half of the cabinet brims with skin care products. A lot of them. Mostly Clinique For Men, but there are other labels, Kinerase, Anthony, some others with Europeanish names probably invented by marketers. Rodney can't help feeling sort of surprised, though he's not sure why. John is very good-looking, and it only stands to reason that there's some effort involved in it.

He twitches the cabinet doors shut quietly, and comes back into the main area of the loft, accepting a beer from John and studying his face, trying to detect traces of cosmetic intervention.

Nothing's out of the range of normal there, though, beyond the simple fact of John's general handsomeness. Nothing looks like it's been surgically pulled or tucked, tightened or filled in: John's eyes crinkle when he beams and waves a hand, inviting Rodney to sit near him; the smile curling his mouth looks natural to Rodney's eye, his brow is expressive enough to rule out botox.

(And Rodney knows what a botoxed face looks like - two of the bankers he dealt with when he set up the consultancy-cum-lab sported artificially smooth foreheads and manicured eyebrows: ridiculous on women, but on men in three-piece suits behind mahogany desks? Unforgettably creepy.)

John, though, radiates natural charm. It's reassuring, in a way, to think he can be... well, John, with these manly good looks and sex appeal, and yet somehow also be worried enough to collect skin care products. It would be terrible if John were some sort of vain narcissist, but Rodney's confident of his ability to glean that sort of stupidity. If John were a superficial, vapid idiot, Rodney wouldn't be sitting on his couch, smiling helplessly back at him.

"We could, uh," John scuffs the back of his neck with his free hand, tipping his beer bottle toward the television, "put something on, maybe. I'm pretty well stocked up on Godzilla and Gamera movies."

Rodney's pretty sure that John's offer means he doesn't expect to pay much attention to the television. Apart from geek cachet, those movies don't have much going for them, and Rodney's not convinced anyone over the age of six enjoys them unironically.

"Sure," he says, "Japanese megafauna's always good."

John smiles, swigs his beer and hops up to choose one. Soon Godzilla vs. Mothra blooms on the large screen; John shuts off the overhead light on his way back, and the room glows with effulgent Technicolor reds and blues.

Rodney sets his beer aside only half-drunk; John doesn't retrieve his either. Their hands touch, catch, link together, and when they turn their heads they're each already tilting for a kiss.

Third time's the charm, thinks Rodney: where their first set of kisses progressed quickly from shy to enthusiastic, and the second set felt passionate and slightly aggressive, this is nothing but easy, gentle heat simmering, kisses infused with budding familiarity - finally, kisses lacking the tangy insecure note of first anythings.

Rodney pivots and presses his hip into the couch to better tease the shell of John's ear with his tongue, and he's rewarded by a low cut-off groan. John in turn reaches with both hands for the sides of Rodney's face to pull him close and suck at his lower lip. It's strange to think that maybe no one's ever done that to him, not quite like this.

It seems like no time at all before he feels John's fingers slide down the back of his pants, realizes he's long since shoved his own hands up under John's shirt, one hand spanning between John's shoulder blades. On the television, though, Godzilla is roaring, so it must have been a while. The monsters never show up in kaiju movies til at least half an hour in.

John's mouth flickers over another sweet spot on Rodney's neck, and he groans, shifting to give him even more access. If he's going to leave here with any dignity at all, he really ought to call a halt to this and march right back out to... his cold, cramped lonely car, to drive back to his cold, cramped lonely apartment with its objectionable lack of John Sheppard in his bed.

Dignity may be overrated.

Still. Rodney tilts back and flops against the cushions with a deep sigh, full of regret and good intentions, ready to remind John of their agreement and start excusing himself before he pushes it too far. But John follows the movement and presses him bodily into the couch, long torso stretching against Rodney's chest, and then his thighs bracket Rodney's, his mouth hot and intent.

And really, _really,_ Rodney can hardly be expected to, what, push John away? Only an idiot would interrupt a makeout session of this caliber, and Rodney's not an idiot - the farthest possible thing from, in fact - and anyway, it's John's fault too, it's John's fault _more,_ he's the one presumptuously just _climbing aboard._ Granted when Rodney leaned back, he did sort of still have his hands on John and might perhaps have inadvertently tugged a little, but that was - if it even happened! - accidental.

He has a moment of panic when he realizes he's hard, fully and unmistakably hard. While Rodney isn't one to take pride in a quality of his physiology, something genetically determined and certainly not an achievement on his part, still: it's just a fact that when he's erect, it's fairly impossible not to notice. Certainly John can't have missed it.

John hasn't, apparently, because despite the onslaught of kisses he's left a decorous few inches of space between his hips and Rodney's, but when he feels it - John's weight slides lightly over his erection, and Rodney can only groan deeply - John suddenly jerks, sealing against him, and _yes,_ he's hard too, gloriously, and Rodney gives up any pretense of abiding by this "slow" nonsense and just grabs John's ass with both hands and kisses him with everything he's got.

Their bodies know this dance, sex muscle memory or something like that, because even though it's been a while, Rodney finds that his fingers don't need any conscious input on his part to start undoing John's fly. John gropes him in answer and Rodney bucks into his hand; they fumble and press and open just enough space between them to allow for mutual unzipping.

"Nn, God," Rodney breathes, nearly biting his tongue when the tips of his fingers graze the thin hot sweet sweet skin of John's dick.

"Yeah," John sighs, and he sounds as crazily befuddled and enthusiastic and _gone_ as Rodney feels.

John inches back a little, making room between them again while his mouth leaves a chain of sensation from Rodney's ear to the base of his neck. Rodney takes advantage of the room to get his hand around John more firmly, giving him one gentle dry pull. John's choked groan against his throat is as thrilling as anything Rodney's ever felt.

"Rodney," John says, so smoky and broken it's barely a word, "god," and then a grunt that sounds defenseless, and even through the urgency, the arousal, the physical high... Rodney feels so much for John, it's like there's hardly room for it inside his skin.

And then John's hand slides into his pants and boxers to reciprocate and all of Rodney's sentimental floundering whooshes out of him with the rush of heat zinging to his balls.

John's fingers are long and circle Rodney's dick firmly, and tug; a touch both determined and lazy, and such a perfect match for John's slouching and certainty that it startles a chuckle out of Rodney, whose own grip on John's cock falters a little. Rodney's hit with a sense of absurdity: this, the two of them gasping with their hands down each others' pants, it's ridiculous. Then John's hand drags up his shaft again and his thoughts just incinerate.

A moment later he hisses when John tries some kind of twisting thing at the wrong spot; John doesn't seem to know quite how to deal with intact foreskin, tracing it momentarily, and it's a bolt of heat right down the center of Rodney's solar plexus to think, what if he's the first, the first uncut guy John's touched like this, that's. God. And then John seems to get it, cinching his hand and working it until Rodney's aching to thrust up.

Instead he plays his fingers up and down John's cock - god, he's holding John's - it's overwhelming, and also too dry, he should spit into his hand, but that feels dissonant, an interruption that might make John think twice, so he tries to stroke John firmly but with finesse so as not to chafe him, fingers rippling up the shaft and under the head. John clutches his shoulder and stutters on his name.

Rodney kisses him and kind of loses his rhythm, again, but it's good anyway, good, better, great, with his free hand in John's hair and John's fingers getting more clever with each circuit along his dick, and now Rodney's the one babbling John's name out loud as they both keep writhing and try to lick each other's ear at the same time. Ridiculous or not, it's hot, and the whiny note of John's throaty noises is ludicrously sexy, too; Rodney's so, so glad they didn't take it slow at all.

He's just congratulating himself for holding off his orgasm for a nearly respectable length of time, though he feels it building and knows it's imminent, when John finally does manage to latch on to his ear with a shocking scrape of teeth and sudden invasion of hot wriggly tongue. Rodney heaves up, lifting them both momentarily, and John's hand slips along his length one last time and he's coming, and it feels _so good,_ and it keeps feeling good, a rush of wellbeing that throbs through him even after the orgasm plays out and ends.

He always forgets this about sex with a partner, that it's not just the usual climax-release-cleanup, with nothing but a slight endorphin lift to show for it afterward. He feels amazing, toes to fingertips to the top of his head, and he wants to make John feel just like this, right now.

John's hips are already rocking a little, so Rodney goes with that and releases him just long enough to finally lick his palm, circle his whole hand around him. Rodney urges him to thrust through, tongues his collarbone and sucks at his neck and then, oh: he feels John hit the peak, the twitch and pulse of his cock, come jetting warm against Rodney's hip and running down and soaking into his boxers, the heavy lax weight of John entirely relaxing now in his arms. Even the discomfort, wet fabric and his leg falling asleep, even that feels fantastic.

After a minute it occurs to Rodney that John's panting wordlessness might not be the happy dazed silence he himself is observing (actually a sheer inability to form meaningful sentences due to deep post-coital drowsiness) but the silence of regret: the silence of a guy doing a frantic search for the best phrase of dismissal. The thought yanks Rodney down a notch or two, but he keeps mindlessly rubbing the back of John's neck for now.

Then John lifts his face from the crook of Rodney's neck and says, "Oops," and the swollen, sardonic curve of his mouth tells Rodney that regret doesn't figure into this equation.

"Oh! Oh, good," he says, and pulls John closer for a kiss. "Now we know our definitions of speed match up. I feel it's always good to align parameters early on."

"Come on," John says, still smiling but sounding a little more chagrined, "that wasn't slow by any definition."

"No," Rodney admits, "it really wasn't. But it was great, so... perhaps the one makes up for the other?"

John kisses him. "Yeah," he says, "that math works out."


End file.
